TALLADEGA, Ala. -- With 12 consecutive top-10 finishes heading into Saturday's Mountain Dew 250 at Talladega Superspeedway, Matt Crafton has every reason to be pleased with a position in the top five in points. But when he compares this season to 2009, it's evident Crafton -- who was runner-up to Ron Hornaday -- expected much more.

"This team shouldn't be happy with top-10 finishes," Crafton said. "We should be happy with top-fives. We definitely haven't had the year we wanted to, especially coming off 2009. We had a pretty damn good year, and this year has not lived up to that standard."

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We're seeing if we can get the goose egg out of the win column. I'd be happy with that and to be able to compete every week for wins.

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-- MATT CRAFTON

If there's a moment where Crafton's momentum went from good to bad, it came with a 27th-place finish at Atlanta in the season's second race. Three races later, Crafton finished 25th at Kansas, and then a crash at Texas and engine failure at Michigan dropped him all the way to 10th in the points.

"We started off with a fifth-place finish at Daytona, which is a crap shoot," Crafton said. "Then we went to Atlanta and ran really good and got wrecked. Then after that, made a mistake and got wrecked. And it was a snowball effect at that point. We just kept having problem after problem after problem. We looked at ourselves and we were 10th in the points and last year, we were leading. And we wondered, 'How the hell did we get here?' "

Without the opportunity to achieve his ultimate goal -- a championship -- Crafton's focus is now on winning a race before the season ends. His only truck victory came at Charlotte in 2008, but he has 40 top-five finishes in 243 career starts, including seven this season.

"We're seeing if we can get the goose egg out of the win column," Crafton said. "I'd be happy with that and to be able to compete every week for wins."

Crafton said the key for the final four races is to build on the team's recent performance and prepare for another title run next season. At the same time, Crafton wouldn't mind doffing a tuxedo for the banquet in Miami Beach next month. And putting together a string of good finishes has helped Crafton move back into contention.

"Now we're fifth and just trying to end the season on a good note, trying to build momentum for 2011 and because we're not in the championship hunt, we can try things," Crafton said. "If you're racing for a championship, you're going to go to the track with things you know are good already.

"It's all about finding the little things to make the race team better. Yes, we want to be in the top five and be at the banquet at the end of the year, but at the end of the day, we're looking at 2011 as well and ways to make this race team better. We want to compete for a win each and every week."

For Crafton, it's all about limiting failure as a result of human error.

"We know we can get back up there," Crafton said. "We just can't make the mistakes that we had at the beginning of the year. We just had too many mistakes. Todd Bodine should win this championship because he hasn't had as many mistakes. Last year, we didn't have the mistakes and this year, we have."

But compounding things for Crafton in 2010 has been a string of lousy luck.

"In racing, you have to be good," Crafton said. "But a damn good race car driver, Davey Allison, told me, 'I'd rather be lucky than good.' And that is the truth. I'd rather be lucky than good in this sport. Obviously, you've got to be good at the same time but you've also got to be lucky. Last year, we had a pretty lucky season and most things went our way, but not everything because we weren't sitting on the stage."

No matter how the season finishes, Crafton looks forward to getting back to his Tulare, Calif., home this winter and getting out his sand rail, a lighter, racier cousin to dune buggies. It's his way of escaping the pressures of racing and clearing his mind for a few months.

"After the banquet, I'll go eat some turkey on Thursday and then fly out to California and go out to the desert after that," Crafton said. "That's what it's all about, being able to go home and relax and be able to let everything go. If you had a good race, if you had a bad race, just let it go and go on to the next one."